September 14, 2010 – A child turning down a college scholarship to pursue a career in rap sounds like most mothers' worst nightmare. Luckily for the Detroit rapper Big Sean, his mother isn't like most. "My mom went to Hollywood to act in movies but became an English teacher to support me and my brother," says Sean Anderson, 22, who bailed on Michigan State. "She gave up her dream. So when my dream came around, she was like, 'Oh baby, you got to do it. You can go to school later.'?" He's since received a different kind of education. In 2006 the fledgling rapper brazenly approached Kanye West at a Detroit radio station while the superstar was in town on a promotional trip and asked to freestyle for him. "Kanye was like, 'You got 16 bars: Go!'?" remembers Sean. "That 16 bars turned into ten minutes.

June 11, 2010 – Hip-hop's greatest new MC gives his music away, tweets his baby's birth, and rhymes his name with Hanukkah. Is this guy for real? [Magazine excerpt] Jay Electronica lives in a third-floor walk-up around the corner from a street lined with bodegas, liquor stores, and hair salons in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, one of New York City's last neighborhoods untouched by gentrification. Barefoot, wearing a white polo T-shirt and gray sweatpants, the rapper rummages through what he calls his "bedroom-slash-studio-slash-cave," i.e. a small, nondescript office next to the living room. He lights a cigarette, takes one drag, then leaves it to burn down in the ashtray. Tiny scars cover his fingers. "+ god –" is tattooed cryptically behind his left ear.

April 2, 2010 – Nicki Minaj is the rare rapper without a chip on her shoulder. She's not even bitter about her time as an unsigned artist, when she struggled to get her gum-snapping flow noticed. "I was shopped around a lot early on," says the bubbly 25-year-old, born Onika Maraj. "The major labels weren't interested, and they shouldn't have been. They shouldn't have been excited to sign somebody that no one knew about." So she made a name for herself. In 2007, the Queens native shot a video for the punchlinedriven track "Click Clack," which landed on the underground rap DVD The Come Up Vol. 11: The Carter Edition. The clip caught the attention of Lil Wayne, who was featured on the same compilation, and the superstar promptly signed Minaj to his Young Money imprint.

July 18, 2009 – Though not a Christian rapper, Kid Cudi found Jesus in a Virgin Megastore. "I was looking at CDs, saw the gleam of a Jesus piece in the right side of my eye, looked up, and it was Kanye West," says the rapper, who decided this was divine intervention on behalf of his recording career. Mustering all his folksy Midwestern charm, he introduced himself and offered up his music. West politely balked, yet Cudi (born Scott Mescudi 25 years ago) persisted. "I said, 'We'll be working together one day soon.' " Last summer, three years after thatencounter, Cudi's prediction came true when West summoned him to Hawaii to work on 808s & Heartbreak. West had been impressed by Cudi's debut single, "Day 'N' Nite"-a dreamy tale about a lonely stoner seeking (what else?) enlightenment-which Cudi had released on the indie hip-hop label Fools Gold.

July 17, 2009 – One morning in 2004, Chris Palko woke up in Middletown, New York's Elizabeth A. Horton Memorial Hospital, terrified that he would be committed again. Six hours earlier, depressed over his stalled career, his Volkswagen's busted engine, and a recent breakup, the rapper known as Cage had eaten half an ounce of psychedelic mushrooms (typically, two people would split an eighth of an ounce). Now, at 8 A.M., he was lying next to a guy in a partial body cast who was groaning in pain. Cage's left arm was bandaged to cover self-inflicted cigarette burns and slash marks. But he was more concerned with doctors discovering that as a teenager he'd spent 18 months in a psychiatric ward at Westchester's Stony Lodge Hospital. After this latest episode, doctors were likely to recommend that he again be institutionalized. So he got dressed and fled.

August 1, 2008 – After Q-Tip transformed hip-hop with A Tribe Called Quest, he endured solo exile and ran the celebrity gauntlet. Will he now be accepted back as an MC elder? He's prepared, regardless. "I take what I do seriously," he says, "but it's a lighthearted seriousness." Kamaal "Q-Tip" Fareed is the leader of Queens, New York–based group A Tribe Called Quest, whose innovative first three albums are perhaps hip-hop's most universally beloved — by both fans and critics. Tensions plagued 1996's disappointing fourth, Beats, Rhymes and Life, and the trio split in 1998. But despite reuniting a few times — including for the current Rock the Bells tour — Q-Tip, 38, is still uneasy mulling over his legacy. "I'm just tired of talking about Tribe, B," he says over the phone, three days after our initial interview, which took place at Universal Records' Midtown Manhattan offices.